Christmas at the A&E

As I begin to write, I'm sitting in the backseat of the family car, driving down the winding roads at the Singapore General Hospital compound. My sister at the wheel and my dad beside her. We make casual conversation and feeble jokes, but it just adds more to the bland and numb atmosphere that hangs all around us, complemented with the dull, lukewarm blue hue and dark shadows of the early Christmas morning, cold and desolate.

But really, we were all just trying to distract ourselves from the uneasiness, filling in for the absence of Mom. 

We were having a staycation at Changi Village for the Christmas holidays, but Mom's health was deteriorating as she frequently vomited, experienced chills and began running irregular bouts of high fever. On Christmas Eve we were to attend a church Christmas service in town, but because Mom was in no state to go, I stayed back at the hotel with her while my Dad and sister went on ahead. Mom kept apologising, but there really wasn't anything to apologise for.

Then at around 3 am in the morning I was roused awake to the distant voices of my family, and the blurry lamp lights. I was still too sleep-intoxicated to get up, so I just laid in the comfortable white sheets listening, as if it were all a dream. Mom's raspy voice, Dad and Stacey discussing over whether to check out now and bring Mom to the hospital, until one of the distant voices became clearer and my sister walked in to wake me up. Pack up, we're going to the A&E. 

It was a silent ride all the way to SGH, save for occasional inquiries over Mom's condition. We pulled into the A&E driveway and my sister took over the wheel to park the car as Dad and I got a wheelchair and wheeled Mom into the building. Since Mom was running a fever, she had to be taken to the Fever Zone and only one family member could accompany her. I waited in the waiting area as Dad gave me a nod of reassurance and wheeled Mom through the fogged glass sliding doors.

The A&E seemed like a set from a television drama, and the medics, hospital staff, policemen, patients were all the players. But this was real.

An expatriate with a bloodied bandage on his forehead was speaking in some sort of Dutch-sounding language to his male friend. A pair of policemen standing guard over their subject who had his legs bound with black strips. An Indian man with greying hair in a wheelchair looking all disorientated. A group of party-dressed teens with members suffering from a black eye and bandaged head talking loudly about some scuffle that had occurred earlier.

The Indian in the wheelchair suddenly started asking no one in particular in a slurred tone for water. I was holding onto an unopened bottle of mineral water and was contemplating if I should offer it to him, but my sister who had by then joined me stopped me and said the policemen and hospital staff will handle him.

He then turned to one of the police officers standing guard over the subject, threatening to throw his temper if they did not comply to his demands, to which the officer firmly retorted whether the Indian would take responsibility for him if the officer fails to watch over his subject.

 

A medic stormed into the waiting room and started scolding the Indian man in Malay, and from the heated exchange I found the reason why. Apparently this is the man's fourth visit to the A&E in a day because he went and got himself drunk all day. The medic accused the man for being "a waste of taxpayers' money" because he was unnecessarily depriving casualties out there who were probably in greater need of medical attention from getting an ambulance quickly. "If I could do something to you I definitely will", the medic threatened before storming off while the Indian man continued to mumble to himself. All of these scenes unfolded before me, and I could only keep my head down like a nun trying not to seem as though I was paying too much attention.

Dad updated us via the family Whatsapp group on the urine and blood tests they ran on Mom, and in the end the doctor diagnosed an infection that could have probably spread to her bloodstream and affected her liver, therefore requiring her to be warded for further close observation. It was around 7 am then, and we went to see Mom again who was resting in the holding room while the hospital located a hospital bed for her.

As we prepared to go home first before coming back in the late afternoon, Mom apologised again, and wished us Merry Christmas to which I joked "isn't so merry after all". 

Now, on further thought, I wondered why I was lying there in the hotel bed when I heard and understood that Mom's health wasn't getting better. It seemed as though I didn't want to believe it was true. I realised that these days as Mom retched and complained of aches and chills I had desperately wanted her to stop, naively thinking that she was over exaggerating her condition and telling her not to assume the worst. 

But I just didn't want to accept the possibility that her condition would be serious. I had wanted to believe that it was just a bout of cold or bad flu, and all would be fine after a few days of rest and medication. I didn't want to know that my parents aren't as healthy as they used to be and prepare for a future of them evidently walking a path of physical suffering and vulnerability to illnesses. I was too naive and afraid.

So now I'm at home and resting, and I think of how this Christmas won't be forgotten so easily having spent the early hours at the A&E waiting and worrying. I think of how I have to stop running away from reality into dreams so conveniently.